You don't need to go to extremes to find this process happening. Like I said, it's already happening in the West, right here, right now. Plenty of sciences have been damaged or almost destroyed in the West by creeping authoritarianism and even now the sights have been set on the "hard sciences" and engineering. There's little reason to believe it's going to be any slower in China than where there at least the residual fumes of openness of inquiry and thought, and some people who still operate as if that's the order of the day.

Knowing it's a bad idea doesn't seem to stop anybody here, because the driving forces of politics and power don't care. Submission is more important than correctness.